The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is delisting and relinquishing management of gray wolves back to state wildlife officials while simultaneously proposing “new rules”1 to “save” the Mexican gray wolf. The proposals include:

► Keeping the Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) on the endangered list as a subspecies. A conundrum. The Mexican wolf is a gray wolf that breeds with other gray wolves and is not a subspecies. A grizzly and a black bear are subspecies. A horse and donkey are subspecies that produce sterile offspring.

►Issuing permits to private landowners to kill wolves killing livestock on their property based on the number of Mexican gray wolves that exist in the wild, not immediate or continuing wolf depredations.

►Handling Mexican wolves killing livestock on private lands are not included in the USFWS’s new ‘problem’ wolf proposals. Mexican wolves killing livestock on private land are problem wolves. More